Typical for SE to be this bone headed.

Square Enix has already been on my shit list after they screwed over the fantastic Chrono Trigger project (several CT projects over the years, really) awhile back in the same way -- letting it go on for years of hard work before dropping the hammer. But as long as people will line up to buy Final Fantasy Rehashed XX, they don't care. I haven't bought nor played a Square product since the SNES days.

And honestly, they've even doubled down on their DRM stances recently too. Which also prevents me from throwing money at them. Which is fine; there have been plenty of great other game companies for me to throw it at that produce content how I want (see: Shadowrun Returns). More money for the artists and developers I care about that don't equate me with a machine that shits dollar bills into their hands on demand that they can slap around at will.

Having played quite a bit of D&D 3.5 in my day (and some Shadowrun 3.0), I thought it was a great creative outlet as well as a nice social experience. Say what you want about it, but sitting in a room with a half dozen buddies for several hours, snacking and playing, is actually quite fun. "Game Night" was one of my favorite weeknights, even if I didn't go to bed until after 4AM because of it (just to get back up for 8AM class).

Re: Google Revises History - Again

I concur to an extent. They do change the rules a lot, and various services have a bad habit of going poof... Which is disappointing. I now use duckduckgo for my searches and have pared back to just a gmail and google sites page. My youtube account has a G+ account for no damn reason other than google has arbitrary stupid rules for no reason (did i mention it was stupid?).

"Your honor, we'd only like Aereo to be treated like a cable company when it suits us, and then not treated like one when it doesn't. Much like how Verizon wants to be under Title II for subsidies. But not for anything else. See, we've got precendent!"

Thanks to the techdirt news about him, I've made it a point to catch Wil Wheaton's show on SyFy. I must admit, it's pretty good. Far more interesting than most of the stuff that has taken over that channel ever since they quit being "SciFi" (in more ways than one).

Now if they'd just bring back MST3K... And have them riff on their own scifi originals...

Re: Re:

I... Think this is a genius idea.

I have basically written off anything that comes out of EA and Ubisoft and various other companies for years now. And it isn't that I don't spend the money -- I just don't spend it on their stuff. I avoid their games at all costs. But to actually tell them "Hey I just bought indie game because of your draconian DRM practices and refuse to touch your products until you about face" seems perfect.

Of course, at this rate, they're pretty much dead to me. I've found so many great indie games that I can't dream of going back.

This type of draconian activity just disgusts me to no end. Heck, just yesterday I was on Steam (which is about as much DRM as I can stand) and saw they had L.A. Noire on sale. I was like, this looks cool, and the reviews are good, but then I saw something -- it comes with GameShield DRM. Automatically noped out of that page and went and bought the soundtrack to Hotline Miami instead. Every time a company pisses me off with their terrible DRM schemes, I purposefully go out and buy something indie (it's how I first acquired the amazing game Legend of Grimrock, too). Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can do anything to show these legacy players my disdain for their short sightedness and urge to maintain the status quo (and "profit quo", as it were).

It never ceases to amaze me how when some group or lobby gives a sliver of the pie, the lengths they will go to so that they don't have to give it up. Reminds me of listening to my local congressman talk a few years ago, where he said:

"Everybody always calls and tells me that we need to cut government. And in the next breath, says why this or that thing shouldn't be cut or should get an increase."

Of course, we're used to it in Illinois, too. We had a "temporary" state tax increase recently so the state could (attempt to) pay off some of its many late bills and IOUs.

Well, guess what, the state is still bleeding red ink (and I'm not even sure they paid off all of the IOUs), and so they want to make said tax increase permanent. They didn't cut anything of note, and the budget ballooned again, and the money was likely squandered. Which many of us cynically assumed was the plan all along, anyway.

In a somewhat related story, if anyone believes in the altruism of any lobbying group or politician, then I've got this here bridge for sale...

*given that it seems to involve them determining who is, and who is not, a journalist*

I just wanted to comment on this part here... Freedom of the Press doesn't mean, to my understanding, that the government gets to decide who "The Press" is. In fact, I would read into it (and I'm sure it's been discussed here before), that The Press is the printing press. So today, anyone who blogs or writes a letter to the editor or anything is a 'journalist' in the legally important sense of the word. Of course, legacy journalist industries and societies may have their own ulterior motives for not always supporting this viewpoint.

I just got this new game Goat Simulator and I find myself outside eating grass and kicking the shit out of stuff everywhere and then randomly headbutting things as if I'm being controlled by an invisible third party hand.

What's with all the euphemistic names? US Copyright Group. Chamber of Commerce. US Patent Consortium. (I just made that last one up, I think). Why can't we have truth in naming! The Print Us Free Money Coalition. Or... Extortion From The Unwilling, LLC.